N07 Productions
N07 Productions is a Machinima studio started in 2009 by current head Andrew Bluett. The group currently consists of 7 people, and is known for using their own inside jokes in their videos, as well as video delays. History Pre-Machinima Before becoming a Machinima studio, N07 Productions was originally known as naetle07 Productions, after Andrew's username on YouTube, and was operated by him alone. He made AMVs of the Kingdom Hearts in-game cutscenes for many of the games in the franchise, and even made a parody series, "Kingdom Hearts The Untold Files," which ran for 15 episodes. Foray Into Halo Machinima In 2009, Andrew produced his first Machinima short, "Mission Improbable," a Mission Impossible parody. The video was negatively received, and a second video was released not long afterwards, showcasing comical events whilst driving in Halo 3. More well received, Andrew brought on-board Dan2101 from the Bungie.net group Team Mythic, as well as close friend Joél Rivera, for a series that was expected to be long-term. The series was "Sector 9," a drama about a man, Aaron, falsely imprisoned who escapes execution through mysterious means, along with his companion, Guss. Aaron has gained super human abilities through these unusual circumstances, and used them to break back into the facility in order to steal a means of transporting away from the base. Unfortunately, the series suffered from poor editing, poor voice acting, audio issues, and bad writing. After 2 episodes, the series was cancelled while episode 3 was mid-way into production. Andrew has commented that "...it ended in a way that 9 doesn't need to be concluded. Episode 2's ending was just fine." The videos were removed from the channel mid-2012, to relieve the group of copywrite problems from use of Metallica's "One." From August to December 2009, no new content was put out, due to Andrew beginning high school and Dan2101 leaving to pursue his own goals in life. In January 2010, however, Andrew began a new long-term project: a comedic retelling of his high school career in machinima form, entitled "High Life." The first Chapter, while suffering from minor editing and audio problems, was well-received, and Chapter 2 also was poisitively received. However, Chapters 3 to 5 suffered from little care, bad editing, audio issues, and rushed production. Unlike Sector 9, High Life is still on the channel, if not just for the sake of N07's next project. Lost in Reach In May 2010, Bungie launched the Halo Reach Multiplayer Beta. Since abandoning High Life, Andrew had thought of doing a mini-series in the then-upcoming beta, showing the new mechanics of the game, but having an amusing storyline. So beforehand, two new members were recruited: Jesse Sukeforth and Nick "Nikolai" Yrigollen, both planned to star in the then-unnamed Reach beta series. With no script written and no control over multiplayer matches, Andrew set out to edit the first episode of this new mini-series, explaining what happened to High Life and using the N07 crew's own likenesses for the characters. It was during editing that he came up with the title, "Lost in Reach," a play on the name of the television show, "Lost in Space." Filming for Lost in Reach went better than the crew had initially expected. As stated in the 2012 commentary for Season 1, much of what happened in the series was planned, and it just happened at the moments when they needed them most. After 4 episodes, Lost in Reach ended, and it still remains to be one of the crew's greatest accomplishments. An ODST Machinima Series While still working on Lost in Reach, Andrew had begun writing a new series using Halo 3 ODST, codenamed "Recovery." While working on the series, he was introduced to friends of Sukeforth and Nikolai: Cody "Codinski Alexander Pavlov III" Creamer and Frank Fleury, who would later become valuable assets to N07 Productions. Frank enjoyed Lost in Reach, and requested to assist the crew in any future projects, essentially signing up to join the ranks, as Codinski would later. In late June 2010, Recovery premiered to critical acclaim by just about all who viewed it. Mere days later, the second episode was uploaded to further acclaim. This would continue throughout the series' end in April 2011, after 9 episodes. Even now, viewers are asking for a continuation to the series, but nobody from the group has responded to these requests, and the only thing done with Recovery since the end of the series was a series commentary with Andrew and Jesse in June 2012, which Andrew commonly describes as "Andrew and Jesse Sit and Bitch for 80 Minutes About Sitting and Bitching for 80 Minutes: The Movie". Lost in Reach Season 2 Even when Lost in Reach ended, much of the crew had considered creating another season of Lost in Reach. After much thought, Andrew decided on creating a teaser trailer while Recovery was still young. The teaser gave a release date of Fall 2010, around the time of Halo Reach's release date. Unfortunately, due to Recovery taking longer to produce and school work piling up, Season 2 was delayed until Spring 2011, announced through a second teaser. After Recovery finished, Andrew wrote out the entire season over the course of 2 weeks, and the season premiere was finished days ahead of schedule, a first for N07. Episode 5 was uploaded on May 1, 2011 to much praise, and Episode 6 only a few days later. While contemplating what to do with Jesse's character, friend of the N07 team Connor Paul came up with the idea to have a few in-between episodes, describing Jesse's adventures throughout Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2. Coincidentally, at E3 that year, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary was announced. In 1 day, Season 2.5 was written, and Connor was sent the script. After a month of procrastination, Connor delivered his lines for Season 2.5, backing up Season 2 by a few weeks. "I was building suspense," Connor so often claims. Codinski and Frank also made their Machinima debuts in Lost in Reach's second season. After Episode 9 was released, Andrew suffered a crippling computer crash, leaving the team incapacitated for months. Trying to keep viewers, Andrew uploaded Vlogs and Updates every so often to keep people informed on their progress, usually making empty promises. He has also stated that, because of the long wait, there will be a Season 3 of Lost in Reach. Andrew later rewrote the rest of Season 2 to open up opportunity for a third season. In June 2012, a teaser was uploaded saying that the last 2 episodes of Season 2 will be coming out in July. The claim may be legitimate, as the N07 Productions Facebook page has stated that editing for Episode 10 had begun. Episode 10 of Lost in Reach was finally released on Bungie Day 2012 (July 7), after an hour-long Live Show with Andrew, Frank, and composer Brad Smith of Red Button Productions. Fans see the episode as "confusing," though Andrew has stated that "episode is the setup to season 3," and that Episode 11 would "hopefully" be released by the end of July 2012, and has said that Season 3 is undergoing both pre-production and production stages simultaneously, while Episode 11 is currently in production stages. Episode 11 was released in October, and shortly afterward the Christmas Special "Jesse Saves Christmas" was announced. Jesse Saves Christmas Due to a late start on production, "Jesse Saves Christmas" has a slated new release date of Late January to mid-February 2013, or, as Andrew puts it, "Sometime this current winter." To prove that the special was still being worked on, a scene from Act 1 of the special, which provided exposition on why Christmas was in peril, as well as featured N07 Productions' first local female VA since Kennedy Bates in "Recovery." Andrew also shed a bit of light on the third season of Lost in Reach and a new drama series mentioned in the "Boredom Update" video known simply as "Sovereign," slating estimated release dates of Spring and Summer 2013, respectively. The Christmas special was released to universal acclaim on March 8, 2013, which was also Andrew's 18th birthday. Before being officially put in YouTube search results, a psuedo-premiere of the special was held at his house. The special featured Andy Graffham (Limeyman423) as both Santa Claus and the Ghost of Tupac. Lost in Reach Season 3 After a technical failure midway into Lost in Reach Season 2, it was announced that, to make up for the long wait for the rest of the season, the rest of it would be re-written to allow for a third season, in spite of season 2 intending to be the finale. After Season 2 was finished in October 2012, Season 3 was announced to start being released in Spring of 2013. On January 8th, 2013, it was revealed on the N07 Facebook page that the first teaser for Lost in Reach Season 3 was in the works and would be finished within the next week. Accompanying this information was the first promotional picture for Season 3, which featured the three cast members from Season 1 (Joél, Nick, and Andrew) in, presumably, their whereabouts during the time of the teaser. The third season has gone through several rewrites before having professional-grade scripts written for the final ideas. Via the N07 Facebook page, it was announced that, while Season 3 will retain its comedic feel and attempt to break the barriers set by Season 2's jokes, it will also have dramatic elements incorporated into the comedy, much like Episodes 10 and 11 did. On January 31st, the teaser was finally uploaded to YouTube after composer Bradley Smith resolved problems with his software. The teaser featured the character Trench from Falco Maton's "Paradox Tales" series, of which Andrew is a member of the cast. In the three-part story "The Death of Falco Maton," Andrew references that Falco knew that he had experienced time travel before and didn't want to relive the experience, but he ended up traveling back in time anyway as part of a plan to save Falco from Trench, his evil clone. This confirms that Lost in Reach and Paradox Tales are loosely linked by Andrew's presence, but the chronology of these events has yet to be seen. Season 3 began on May 27, 2013, with Episode 12 of the series, "Show Me The Way." The episode took place almost entirely in the Halo 3 engine, save the ending scene, which returns to Halo: Reach. Though originally planned to wrap production by Winter 2013, delays in production and multiple rewrites of the episode scripts have made a definite end-date for the series uncertain. Since the season premiere, two more episodes have been uploaded, in August 2013 and February 2014, with Episode 15 slated for release in June 2014. Dan and BOB Early in 2011, Andrew created a Machinima short for his school television news, "Dan and BOB on Extraterrestrial Culture Day," a segment in honor of the holiday of the same name. The segment spawned the Dan and BOB miniseries, which only consists of 3 episodes. Production of Dan and BOB was akin to that of South Park, with episodes being made within a week with minimal scripting, with a short-lengthed, being comedic segment that is "simple for an audience of 14- to 20-year-olds to comprehend. No, Andrew is not kidding; there are 20-something-year-old sophomores at High School." Sovereign On December 3, 2012, a channel update video was released featuring Andrew and Jesse, discussing Lost in Reach Season 3, Jesse Saves Christmas, and a new series, "Sovereign." No information was given during the update, other than that the series was an action drama. More information about Sovereign was revealed by Andrew in the New Yaer's Update on December 31. On April 30, 2013, the first teaser trailer for Sovereign, titled "Black & White," was published to YouTube. The teaser was narrated by a young man in white armor, talking about the blurred lines of morality. The ending titles stated that a casting call for the series would begin June 1, but this was postponed indefinitely to work more on the story and characters. Machinination In June 2010, N07 Productions became affiliated with the Machinima help site Machinination.com, founded by BoldDoughnut, the founder of the LowerTheGuns movement in the Halo 3 era. Andrew has since become a Staff Moderator for the site and gains support for his projects through its community. Members Current Members Past Members Film Series External Links *http://www.youtube.com/naetle07 (N07 Productions YouTube Channel) *http://www.facebook.com/N07Productions (N07 Productions Facebook Page) *http://www.machinination.com (Machinination.com) Category:Machinima makers